| Author: | Michael Swanwich |
| Copyright: | 1992 |
| Date Reviewed: | 5/14/01 |
| Rating: | 4.5 |
Synopsis: The bureaucrats (we never learn his real name) is assigned to track down Gregorian. Gregorian stole protected technology and it is feared he will use it to dominate his world. Because of the disaster of earth, all advanced technologies are prohibited from less advanced worlds. The bureaucrat arrives on one of these worlds called Miranda. Every 200 years the ice sheets melt and most of the planet is flooded. For some reason, people still build cities knowing that they will eventually be destroyed.
The bureaucrats begins his investigation by interviewing people who knew his target, including Gregorian's mother, sisters, and a witch who studied with Gregorian as a child. Gregorian is a wizard. During the investigation the bureaucrat sees a television commercial of Gregorian promising to turn people into fish so they can remain, even after the tide comes. As the bureaucrats gets closer to his target, Gregorian begins playing with his mind, tricking him into believing that his new lover is dad and mutilated. He even corrupts the bureaucrat's partner. Later he messes with the bureaucrat's mind directly, sending him into an hallucination stupor. Partially incapacitated, Gregorian is able to capture the bureaucrats but the bureaucrat uses prescribe technology to turn the tables, and let end Gregorian die in the flood, chained to an outcrop. One last time, the bureaucrat uses prescribe technology to himself become a fish.
Review: I had high hopes for this novel. The jacket spoke about a world about to be flooded. By coincidence I happened to be reading it on a trip to China. That trip included a cruise down the Yangtze River which is about to be dammed, flooding 13 large cities. I anticipated the parallels. Instead the book became intolerably tedious and I couldn't wait for it to end. The beginning was good enough as the bureaucrat starts his investigation. At first I didn't even mind the magical mysticism, which had worked so well for Robert Silverberg's "Majipoor" series. Here it did not worked so well. With the main theme about technology, the story couldn't seem to make up its mind which direction it was going. Some of the technology was excellent, however much was never explained so the reader is left to guess at the purpose. The bureaucrat was in a hallucinogenic stupor for much of the second half of the book which made it very difficult to know what was reality and what was not. Gregorian still remained a mystery which was probably intention. The climax kept my interest for the last two chapters but by then the story could not be saved.